How I tackle tedious design tasks

Not each and every designer working day is full of creativity. Sometimes it’s just designing a lot of similar tables and forms, or pushing pixels back and forth through the wireframes after gathering aa bunch of feedback and so on. To be honest, I believe that the tedious tasks are the essential part of design process.

If you tend to chase after increasing productivity like I do, you might have discovered the best way to embed the tedious tasks into your working process without spending much energy on procrastination and feeling guilty about the important tasks to be delayed just because you don’t consider them interesting enough.

If the procrastination is still your word, here are some tips that I use in my daily routine that help me and might be beneficial for you.

First things first

I don’t postpone tedious tasks till the end of the day and tackle them first. It might seem easier to approach the most interesting things in the morning but it’s not like that, Keeping tedious work undone till the end of the day has the risk that at the end you will postpone it for tomorrow given the fact that at the end of the day we have less energy.

Sprints, not marathon

I split tedious tasks to pieces with the short breaks between them, trying to keep the focus time slots short enough not to get bored but not too short in order to have enough time to focus deeply on the task. Researches show that the human brain needs 23 min to concentrate after the destruction and to unplug each 90 min to have some rest.

Distractions Off

While working, I put my gadgets to “do not disturb” mode and listen to music that helps to concentrate, e.g. Endel app that uses AI -generated soundscapes for better concentration

Win-Win

When the tasks are done, I reward myself, e.g. make 30 min break to do something I enjoy, go for a short work, or grab a cup of tea

Thank you for reading! I’m Elena, a UX Designer and Researcher. 🌟. Feel free to reach me via LinkedIn